Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality? It’s a question demanding an answer in response to the publication of the detailed 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture, issued last week by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

Because the report was widely cited in the media and easily accessed as a pdf file on the Internet, it is fair to assume that those of our citizens who remain ignorant of the extent of their government’s commitment to torture as an official policy have made a choice not to be informed. A less appealing conclusion would be that they are aware of the heinous acts fully authorized by our president but conclude that such barbarism is not inconsistent with that American way of life that we celebrate.

But that troubling assessment of moral indifference is contradicted by the scores of law enforcement officers, mostly from the FBI, who were so appalled by what they observed as routine official practice in the treatment of prisoners by the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo that they risked their careers to officially complain. A few brave souls from the FBI even compiled a “war crimes file,” suggesting the unthinkable—that we might come to be judged as guilty by the standard we have imposed on others. Superiors in the Justice Department soon put a stop to such FBI efforts to hold CIA agents and other U.S. officials accountable for the crimes they committed.

That this systematic torture was carried out not by a few conveniently described “bad apples” but rather represented official policy condoned at the highest level of government was captured in one of those rare media reports that remind us why the Founding Fathers signed off on the First Amendment.

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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

A federal court has issued two rulings, the New York Times reports: One favoring President Bush's indefinite detentions of "enemy combatants," and another granting one of said "enemy combatants" the opportunity to challenge his detention in court.

The court effectively ruled that President Bush has the same right to indefinitely detain a civilian on American soil as he does an enemy soldier on a battlefield.

Ali al-Marri, the only "enemy combatant" to be held in the continental United States, is in military custody in Charleston, South Carolina. He was arrested in Peoria, Illinois on December 12, 2001 on charges of credit card fraud and lying to federal agents before being sent to Charleston in 2003. A 5-4 majority of the United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, said that a sworn statement from an intelligence official as the government's sole testimony in an earlier proceeding was "inadequate." The official, Jeffrey N. Rapp, said that al-Marri was an al-Qaeda sleeper agent whose objective in the United States was to "commit mass murder and disrupt the banking system."

The other ruling effectively reverses an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel with the same court that ordered that al-Marri be either charged with a crime or released.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, saying that al-Marri had "already received all the process he was due," added that the decision recognize the president's authority to "capture and detain [al-Qaeda] agents who, like the 9/11 hijackers, come to this country to commit or facilitate warlike acts against American civilians."

"This decision," countered Jonathan L. Hafetz, counsel for al-Marri, means the president can pick up any person in the country--citizen or legal resident--and lock them up for years without the most basic safeguard in the Constitution, the right to a criminal trial."

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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

USrael is largely run by Zionists. Name some members of the current power elite who are not Zionists...other than their puppets BushCheney. The people being tortured are largely Muslims.

Do the math.

The really good news about this is that it is a reason that I believe that America may not be shocked into privatization. Playing it safe, I continue to prepare for the possibility.

On the other hand, much of Hitlers financing came from....Zionists. Not sure where their loyalty is except for power. Don't go down that road. That red pill is really uncomfortable.

_________________"If the people allow private banks to control their currency the banks and corporations will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson

Attorney General Michael Mukasey prompted Congress Monday morning, during a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, to create new rules governing the rights of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The American Civil Liberties Union immediately responded to Mukasey's request, calling his proposals nothing short of asking Congress to subvert the Constitution.

I agree with the comments about this article completely:

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Michael Mukasey is a zionist foreign agent. He should be stripped of his dual citizenship and deported back to israel.Christ Stained Amerika

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Google 'Mukasey 9/11'

You'll get 458,000 links. Interesting reading.

LIVE FREE OR DIE

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You can thank the Dems for allowing this guy in, like Zionist Schumer and Feinstein.

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The United States has every right to capture and detain enemy combatants in this conflict, and need not simply release them to return to the battlefield - as indeed some of them have," Mukasey said."

Does this mean that even if these detainees are found innocent our govt can continue to hold them indefinitely? You know, it seems to me that most of these detainees have only been accused by the bush regime of being "enemy combatants" not PROVEN to be. And why would anyone release a CONVICTED criminal sentenced to prison or release a convicted "enemy combatant" to "return to the battlefield?" And how many have been released and how was it determined they returned to the battlefield?

The bush regime criminals must be stopped. They're attempting to usurp power much the same way the Nazis did. (It took the Nazi party a few years to achieve their goal of establishing Hitler's absolute dictatorial power and control--it didn't happen overnight.

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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman